WATCH – LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD –
April 14, 2021 – “It’s always about how can you make the world a better place,” Irsay said. “If you’re involved in the business, in this case of entertainment – we are blessed to be the most watched and entertaining sport in the world. With that, I’m just really excited that we can go at this area and really try to help and change the world and society because really, in 2021 it is still not where we need to be, nowhere close when we look at mental illnesses in our society. It just hasn’t gotten in our DNA about that it is the same thing as a regular, physical illness.”
The Irsay family will host a virtual fundraiser for Kicking The Stigma May 3-6, which will include a roundtable discussion on mental health hosted by NBC’s Carson Daly with Colts linebacker Darius Leonard, Falcons tight end Hayden Hurst, Raiders defensive end Solomon Thomas and Raiders tight end Darren Waller.
“I think even just having really successful players talk about it in such a normal way and the importance of it in such a normal way really helps move the needle in this space,” Jackson said. And it’s also not lost on the Irsays that using football to support mental health can have a significant impact on, truly, kicking the stigma about something so serious, yet so common. “I think that it can be enormously impactful because look at – our guys are the toughest guys,” Irsay said. “… Darius (Leonard) knocks it out of the park with the way he is, just the man that he is – Pro Bowl, All-Pro linebacker, one of the toughest positions to play in the NFL and look what he is saying.
“It’s all right not to be OK. That’s really what it’s about.”
